Pointwise Helps UTA Racing Push Aerodynamic Envelope

By James Merkel
Candidate for Master's Degree in Aerospace
Engineering, the University of Texas at Arlington, Fall 2013

University of Texas at Arlington's (UTA) racing partnership with
Pointwise during the past three years has resulted in an influx of
aggressive aerodynamic development for the UTA Formula SAE race cars.
The grid generation software has been crucial in several developments
that have resulted in significant improvements to the wing packages on
the cars.

Our 2012 wings were designed using both inverse design methods and
existing wing elements for a clean sheet four element wing. Then, we
developed an in-house optimization tool to place the wing elements in
their ideal location for maximum lift coefficient. The UTA team
developed a script that automatically meshed the wing using Pointwise
and outputted the mesh to STAR-CCM+, which ran the simulation and sent
the results to a genetic algorithm which iterated the placement of the
airfoils and sent the new model through the analysis loop again. These
wings had the highest down force levels ever seen for the UTA cars,
producing 550 pounds at 60 miles per hour.

Figure 1: Members of UTA's 2012 Formula SAE team with their H11 and F12 cars.

Aerodynamics Optimization for 2013

The 2013 car further pushed the envelope of aerodynamics. During the
conceptual design phase, the aerodynamics team started with a lap
simulation tool developed by one of our team members and studied the
effects of lift and drag on lap times around the 2012 competition
course. From this we learned two things: more down force ultimately
increases cornering speed and decreases lap times but to a diminishing
point because straight line speed and fuel economy suffers drastically.
Minimizing drag also saw appreciable decreases in lap times on long
straights. This evolved to the development of a five element fully
active aerodynamics package optimized for maximize down force, as well
as minimum drag.

Figure 2: Close up view of the unstructured surface mesh on the rear wing.

For 2013 we used the same profiles and tools to develop a five element
wing using the same criteria of maximizing lift both in ground effect as
well as free stream. We were able to gain an additional 30 percent more
down force compared to the original four element design. The package as
a whole (including underbody diffuser) produced nearly 700 pounds of
down force at 60 miles per hour. Then, using a simpler version of our
optimization algorithm, we iterated the flap placement for a minimum
drag case. Track data has shown up to 0.2 g more acceleration in
straights from the drag reduction when opening the wings.

Controlling the Rear Wings

To control the wings, servo motors were integrated into the main plane
and a light weight carbon linkage used to connect each flap to the
motor, producing a very light weight actuation system. The motors
themselves are controlled by a UTA-designed onboard computer that takes
various sensory inputs from the car, calculates the optimum wing
position based on the track scenario, and outputs the wing position to
the front and rear wing in real time without any driver input. Track
data has already shown large gains in acceleration as well as higher
cornering and straight line speeds. The 2014 car will continue with this
system with further development on the controls for the wings to
maximize the gains on track.

Figure 3: UTA's 2013 FSAE car at SCCA Nationals.

The Pointwise software and technical support enables the SAE team to
aggressively develop cutting edge technology for the Formula SAE series
that has garnered a lot of attention both for the university and
Pointwise. We look forward to continuing the partnership between UTA
Racing and Pointwise for the 2014 competition season.

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